while outside the windowis the September sunand beneath it the city streetsand the people who carry their liveslike corpses on their backs.

They wait for buses and taxis,they wait for their tiny phones to ringand all the lights to finally turn green

as if they truly believedthings had some interest in being done.

Ambition is forthe ambitious

and I will leave them to it.

If history's to be believedwe'll all end up badly one day,and what of it?

We've another bottle in the fridgeand a few more hours of sunlight.

William Taylor Jr. lives and writes in the Tenderloin neighborhood of San Francisco. His poems and stories have been widely published in the independent press in numerous publications including Poesy, The Chiron Review and The New York Quarterly. His latest collection of poetry, The Hunger Season, was released by Sunnyoutside in 2009. An Age of Monsters, a collection of short fiction, is in the works from Epic Rites Press.